


Becoming: North Dakota

by Churbooseanon



Series: For Every Action, A Reaction [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Protective Siblings, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was an Agent of Project Freelancer, he was a damn good sniper that got himself into trouble. The job change was a degree of protective sibling syndrome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming: North Dakota

War is chaos, is motion, and light and noise. Battle is formed of gunfire and screams and explosions that don’t end until you’re dead or the silence of victory stands around you, deep and completely until there is one final burst of screams and cheers celebrating another day survived. Another small struggle won. Another instance of humanity thumbing its collective nose at extinction at the hand of a group of races more populous, possessing superior technology, and who were markedly more bloodthirsty. Not that humanity doesn’t know how to be vicious, doesn’t know how to leave destruction in its wake. But in a battle of survival, anything becomes acceptable, doesn’t it? 

War is chaos and an individual battle is, at best, only a tiny step neater than that. If it goes right, goes according to plan, things still get insanely messy in the predicted ways. Lance Corporal Nicolas Howe gets to watch sometimes, see the second before it all goes to hell. The signs are there, visible through the scope, and there is nothing he can do. He can see a Grunt sneaking up on Private Himamura, but if he takes the shot he gives up his location, which he isn’t supposed to do until the fight actually starts. Nor can he radio down to Himamura in hopes of warning him. The sergeant had stressed radio silence during their briefing, had received reports that the Covies had broken their latest radio encryption ciphers. So he has to stay silent and watch as everything stands on the edge of ruin. 

Nicolas bites the inside of his lip as he watches the Grunt, tracks it closer and closer. Their mission requires stealth and Nic wonders if his sergeant has considered how wrong this can do if the Covies figure them out early. If they realize it’s more than just Himamura scouting locations. Dammit, why does this have to happen? WHy does he have to watch as… 

No, he just can’t, dammit. He can’t sit by and watch one of his friends die because his sergeant isn’t looking far enough ahead. 

That in mind, Nic shifts carefully, lining up a shot on the Grunt. 

“Howe?” a voice whispers at his side as his finger settles over the trigger. 

Great, Sarge probably saw his action coming. Thus Private Conroy is at his shoulder. How long had the other Marine been there? It’s a question that he supposes relays an unspoken part of whatever message the sergeant has sent him. Watch your six, pay attention, don’t get your dumb sniper ass killed, this part of the message says. Well, he thinks he’d rather do his job and watch out for everyone else too, not wait up here and be told that he isn’t allowed to protect his team. 

“Conroy,” Nic mumbles to his squadmate. “Sarge got a message for me?”

“Change of plans,” Conroy agreed. “Said we go on your mark.”

Nic allows himself a smile in response, a toothy one that is predatory on so many levels, and he returns his attention to his scope. Another second lines up the shot through the side of the Grunt’s head to prevent an explosion taking out Himamura, and then his finger flexes just the tiniest bit and the recoil of the sniper rifle is as instantaneous as the loud bang and the distant spray of neon bright blood as the Covie falls. Himamura flinches in his scope before giving a thumbs up and then Nic’s attention is sweeping away.

“Conroy,” Nic says as he searches for targets, “keep your eyes peeled for Jackals. Not letting one of those chicken headed fucks take another one of our men today.”

There is a confirmation pat on his shoulder as Nic lines up a shot on a Brute breaking cover with a thundering roar of displeasure. Nic curses when the thing bends down, his shot sailing over its head, and then there is new motion in the scope. The form of their sergeant rushing in, blasting two shotgun rounds into the thing’s gut. Nic watches it go to its knees, and the Sergeant gets closer to it. The Brute’s near arm comes up and clearly it means to put the thing through the Sarge, pushing Nic into motion. 

“Jackal, top of the mid-level structure at our three,” Conroy announces at his side. 

It can wait Nic decides as he puts the next round through the Brute’s skull, even as the Sarge actually fucking flips out of the range of the intended punch. 

The victory feels hollow as a loud noise too near his ear and a sudden burst of hot moisture splatters over his face. Immediately Nic grabs his rifle and rolls aside. He knows what has happened, but he looks anyway when he’s behind cover. Sure enough Conroy is slumped on the ground, blood around him, and he isn’t squirming or trying to take care of himself. Which only means one thing. A terrible thing that Nic was supposed to prevent. 

Nic curses himself, tries to remember what the terrain looked like moments before. Mental image reconstructed he takes a deep breath, raises his rifle, and peeks out of cover. NO time to make sure the shot is perfect, to get the powerful sniper rifle down and properly braced. Instead he just presses it to his shoulder, comes out of cover and fires once, twice, a third time. His body screams in protest as he takes the full force of the recoil to the shoulder. No amount of dampeners can take off that kind of force in quick succession, and Nic goes down, pain screaming through his body from his shoulder. For a moment he lies there, too consumed by his pain to think of the fight. 

Nic closes his eyes and tries to get himself to move. His team needs him. He needs his team. Nothing is served with him here in pain. Still, his body says no whenever he tries to move. At least when he tries to move the right side of his body that is. 

The squeaky speech of a Grunt makes him open his eyes after who knows how long. His left hand reaches for his sidearm and Nic levels it in front of himself with one hand. He isn’t dying here, isn’t going to lose again. Not here, not now. There is too much else he has to do. 

When the Grunt’s head peeks over the top of the rise Nic fires, doesn’t hesitate. It’s him or it, and today he refuses to let it be him. He fires, fires, fires and fires until his clip is clicking empty. Which, of course, is when he notices the streams of fire streaking from the thing’s pack. Well, looks like he’s completely boned. No way to get far enough in time, barely even enough time to consider how the sergeant is going to kill him for dying. Would be right up her alley too. Maybe he deserves this, though. He didn’t trust the sergeant about anything, he got Conroy killed, and got himself more than simply fucked up. Maybe this is the time ordained for him, the way he goes. 

The fire just heats the air as Nic tries to figure out how much time he has, and then there is a roar of fury and the Grunt goes sailing past him, over the edge of the cliff before its tank explodes. And as the flames expand somewhere behind and below him, Nic is left staring up at the angry expression on his sergeant’s face as the woman lowers the foot she booted the thing away with. 

“God, Nic, why do you have to be such a stupid dickbiscuit all the time?” Sergeant Nicole Howe sighs, shaking her head. “I swear if you pass out and I have to carry your fucking ass back to base…”

“Sorry, Nicky,” he groans as she moves forward and grabs his good arm to pull him up to his feet. 

“What did you say, Lance Corporal?” she snaps at him. 

“Sorry, but I think you’re going to carry me, Ma’am.”

If she curses him for that, Nic doesn’t know, because he’s falling forward into all consuming darkness. 

* * * * * *

The world around him is fuzzy warm, his head filled with the short of haze he knows comes from good pain meds. Not that he’s been on the receiving end of that very often. Mostly he has seen the effects of it on squad members all but down for the count. Once he got to see it on his sister, the medics treating a needler round in her shoulder and a broken arm on the other side. That had been early in the war, though, when he’d been a private visiting his injured sister before his first deployment. Now though, it’s his head that is hazy, his eyes that have trouble opening, and if he isn’t going crazy, then the quiet humming he hears at his side can only be one thing. 

“Stop pretending you’re still asleep,” Nicky grumbles and slowly Nic opens his right eye to peek out at her. 

“How do you know I’m not,” he asks, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. 

“I’ve got your bios pulled up on my pad,” Nicky answers simply. “Got your stats up here in a window even as I’m reading the squad reports before I pass them up to the L.T. Gotta say, Nic, you don’t come out smelling like roses.”

Nic allows himself to open both of his eyes and turn his head to face her. There’s a bruise on the side of her head, but with her it could just as easily have come from breaking up a fight among her Marines as from the battle he remembers. Other than that she looks good for someone who almost got her head knocked off by a Brute. Somehow, though, she always comes out ahead in a fight. Which is a good thing in his book, because in the end his little sister always ends up okay. 

“What the actual fuck are you smiling at, Lancey?” Nicky asks, and even though her voice is hard he has to smile wider as her hand reaches out to brush lightly over his brow. 

“You went face to face with a Brute, Nicky, and you lived.”

“Would have lived even without your shot,” she assures him. “Had a spike grenade ready. Which means Private Conroy…”

She trails off, but the weight of it, the fact that she doesn’t call him on the lack of professionalism means she’s concerned. Professional distance has been replaced with the concern of a twin, tempered with the goal driven intensity of a non-comm officer. It’s always strange to see the difference between Nicky when she’s letting her emotions get in the way and when she’s really putting the job first. She’s always been better at this whole division between who she is and what she has to be than Nic ever has. Which, of course, is why they’re in this position, isn’t it?

“He’s dead, Nic,” she observes. “The best I can tell by the way the fight went, by how badly you fucked yourself up with that rifle, is that you failed to pick up on the Jackal and took it out in desperation. Put my money on you doing something stupid out there, like putting me first. Would I be right about that?”

“Nicky, I…”

“Don’t,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Please don’t give me some bullshit reason why what you did was right. Because maybe you are, maybe you aren’t, but only you know, Nic.ONly you can ever figure out if what you did was the right thing. My concern for now is getting this squad back up to strength. Oh, and Private Himamura has asked me to thank you for saving his fool neck.”

“He could do that himself,” Nic sighs. “I’m sorry.”

There are few things in the squad that annoys his twin so much as being asked to deliver a personal message to him in the role of his sister rather than being treated like a superior officer. Well, she calls herself their ‘superior asshole’ and the squad embraces it and her with both mirth and respect, but the lines blur a bit when it comes to the connection between her and Nic. Sometimes he gets asked to intervene in her wrath because he’s her ‘big brother’ even though she hates the designation. And sometimes she gets asked to look after a hurt sibling rather than a Marine who couldn’t get his damn job done. He knows she hates it, and all Nic can do is hang his head and wish he hadn’t forced her into the position. 

But Nicky just waves Nic’s comment aside, which throws him for a loop. “We’ve got more important things to discuss, Lance Corporal.”

Just like that, with a simple statement of rank and a reinforcement of their professional relationship, she’s all business. It’s like a switch is thrown in her head and Nic has to scramble to keep up with it, to push aside his concern over how hard and tired her tone gets. He’s not used to her being tired. Even at her most overworked, Nicky never seems to get worn down by her job, by her responsibilities. Now it sounds like she’d rather be anywhere but here, doing anything other than this. That seriousness has Nic starting to wiggle himself up into a sitting position, finally taking note that his right arm is bound tightly to his chest. Must have hurt himself worse than he’d thought. 

“What is it, Ma’am?” he asks as she reaches down and pulls something up from the floor. Nic can’t help but smile fondly as she produces pillows and helps him get them behind his back so he can be far more comfortably propped up for whatever she needs out of him. No one, he likes to think, is a more supportive superior to their injured Marines than Nicky, though he does think he misses the alcohol she normally uses him to sneak in to injured squad members. Nothing like fire in the veins to get the heart pumping right she likes to say. 

“I want your opinion on some potential snipers for my team,” his sergeant replies and Nic… decides to try and believe all she wants is another person to cover until he’s better. It has to be that. Only that. It can’t be that someone is transferring him away from his twin. He’s been at her side almost as long as he’s been fighting this war, though not as long as she has. But that doesn’t mean she’s necessarily going to keep him around longer than she has to. People need redeployed sometimes, and it’s just as simple as that. 

“Of course, Ma’am,” he smiles, and he knows the expression is forced. More than forced. He can see in her eyes that she knows it too, but she still hands over the datapad. Helps him prop it up against another pillow she places in his lap so he can use it with only his left hand. 

They spend an hour looking over dossiers, Nicky probing him for opinions on how differently described personalities and records will or won’t mesh with the squad’s dynamic. He even does his best to ignore the implications for how long term she sees this playing out. It’s just that he’s hurt. As soon as he’s cleared to return to service he’s going to be back at her side, clearly. But with every word he finds himself worrying more. Finds himself frustrated and more than a little concerned. 

And when she finally stands to go, Nic offers the datapad back to her, only to swallow back his fear as she shakes her head at him. 

“Keep it,” she insists, her voice more Nicky than Sergeant Howe in that moment. 

“Why?” he asks, and he can clearly hear how strained the word is. 

“It’s got your medical transfer orders on it, Nic. You’re going to need time to get better. But I want you to promise me that wherever they end up putting you when you’re on your feet, you’ll take care of yourself, bro. Because I can’t be there to cover your ass, and I don’t want to end up going AWOL to save your dumb fuck self if it all goes wrong.”

Nic watches her walk away and even manages not to shout to call her back. Its an ending, he knows, and it’s the worst thing in the world. But what can he even begin to do? 

* * * * * *

A series of gentle raps at the frame of the door makes Nic Howe, Lance Corporal of the UNSC Marine Corp, to look up from the duggle he is packing. There isn’t much in it, of course. There hasn’t been much purpose for him to have too many uniforms while in physical therapy, and while he has a few mementos from his old squad, most of them are singular letters from months ago that take up no room at all. He still has Nicky’s old datapad as well as the one family picture he had kept with him on the front lines of them with their father, but mostly he’s taking a while to pack because there isn’t much to do. The time in the hospital, the physical therapy that came after the doctors put pins in his shoulder to put him back together, has been made of fruitless waiting. Even now he’s waiting, this time for the orders he’s been promised today, orders that will get him back into the fight. 

Maybe, if he’s lucky, they’ll send him back to Nicky. He doubts it. 

He lifts his head and turns his attention to the man at the door. He’s a small man with dark brown skin, soft eyes, and a gray and black outfit that doesn’t look military but has the lines of a uniform. Perhaps the messenger he’s waiting for? 

“Yes?” he greets the other man, zipping his duffel. 

“I assume you are one Nicolas Howe,” the man says, his voice warm, soft, and placating in the same way the psychologist NIc had briefly been forced to talk to used on him. 

“Yes,” Nic agrees, frowning. “And you are?”

“My name is Aiden Price, and I am here representing the interests of a military research program called Project Freelancer. Our Director has sent me to judge your… fitness to our goals.”

“What you’re saying is that you’re the headfuck for some group who has already decided they want me but they want ot make sure I’m only here for the physical recovery and not psychological problems. Am I close?” 

“Quite,” the man actually chuckles. “Truth is you’ve already been assigned to our project at the recommendation of one of our top recruits. My presence here is meant to ensure that you choose to join us.”

“So there really isn’t much of a choice for me, is there?” Nic sighs. “You do know I’m not even officially released yet, right? I need to sign paperwork and all of that. I could put that off for a bit, say I don’t feel up to it. Or maybe I’ll just disappear for a while to try and get in touch with my sister before I do anything else.”

Truth be told, part of him had hoped she would be here today, that he’d have the chance to see her before he went back into the fight. And now some asshole wanted to get between him and his goal. 

“I believe I can arrange that, Lance Corporal Howe,” the man answers, and Nic can’t help but roll his eyes. More people promising him things they couldn’t provide. The doctors told him a month back that he was ready to go, but that had been yet another let down. 

“Prove it,” Nic snaps as he lifts his bag. Time to head to the front desk and sign himself out. The sooner he was on the move the faster he could get to the nearest UNSC command post and try to find out about Nicky. 

“Careful what you wish for, dick biscuit.”

The voice, her voice, makes him freeze. Nic actually drops his bag as he looks to the door again and finds a familiar woman there. A new scar decorates Nicky’s cheek, but she looks good, more than good. Alive and vital and bright and he has to beam at her. There is a sparkle of amusement in her eyes and it’s with that look that Nic remembers the difference between them. Immediately he snaps to attention, saluting his sister and it’s only when she returns it flippantly that he sees what is wrong with the situation as it stands. The fatigues she’s wearing have no rank markings. The name on the breast pocket of the shirt doesn’t have their name on it either. Instead the nametag reads ‘South Dakota’ and Nic scrunches his brow in confusion at that. Nicky has to have figured out why because she’s chuckling at his expression. 

Price must read it too because he smiles softly. 

“Project Freelancer members are drawn from all branches of the UNSC and aims to make a masterful fighting force that will turn the tide of the war. As we are creating a team, a tactical unit with the best teach and support, traditional military structure and ranks will be forgone. On operations command will be assigned to those best suited to it in the situation, and to reflect this our agents are assigned code names meant to unite everyone rather than divide them by superiority or inferiority. As such you will be hereby addressed as and expected to respond to ‘Agent North Dakota.’ Is that acceptable?”

Nic smiles, but mostly because Nicky is making ‘blah blah blah’ motions behind the man’s back and over his head. Just like that they’re kids again, and Nic has to like the implication of a leveled playing field between them. It feels good, almost as good as being in her presence again. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But… do you mind if I have a moment to talk to my twin first?”

The man nods in agreement, and as he steps out of the room, Nicky strides in. Once he’s out of sight Nic is moving forward to meet her, catching her in his arms and holding her in the strongest embrace he can manage. Which means that in seconds he’s barely breathing with the strength of her returned hug. 

“It’s good to see you,” he whispers as he holds her, his face in her hair. It smells like peaches for the first time in many years, and that little touch almost chokes him up. 

“I know,” she agrees. “And look, I found a way to watch your ass after all, Nic. I think you owe me the first round of celebratory drinks after I got them to recruit your pathetic sniper butt into their fancy program. I mean, we still have lots of qualifiers and selection processes, but I’ll carry your ass with me if I have to. The last few months have blown to high hell.”

If she’s saying it, Nic believes it fully. He can’t help but smile so wide that his face hurts with it at the implications of what she’s done for him. 

“I couldn’t leave you behind, Lancey,” she whispers. 

“Thanks, Sarge,” he returns, trying not to cry in joy. “Thanks.”


End file.
